Middle Ground
by raspberriesandrum
Summary: It had happened suddenly. The ground and air had shifted and rippled and suddenly where there had once been only one Number Four on Privet Drive there were now two.


**Middle Ground**

**Chapter One: Blind Panic**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter. I also don't own the original premise and content of this story which belongs to Greymoon68.

**WARNING: **This story will contain violence, coarse language, adult situations, homosexuality, mentions of rape, torture and abuse, and possible mentions of incest. Note the rating, not for the kiddies or those easily squicked.

**Author's Note: **So, this story is my response to Greymoon68's_ Parallel Dimensions_ plot bunny challenge on HPFC and let me tell you all that it has been a long time in coming! Hope you all enjoy!

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_It was a sudden thing. One single chain reaction that could not have been accounted for had left the department of mysteries in complete disarray._

_Later, Joanne Lovegood, Unspeakable, would laugh about the matter. But not now, while the aurors swarmed the lowest levels of the Ministry in frenzied confusion, wondering who on earth they should take orders from…_

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There was a hissing in his ear and Harry flinched away from it instinctively. His body felt heavy and there was a sudden burning cold against the side of his face, holding him still. Making him listen to the hissing.

"C'mon, c'mon, wake up! Come on!"

A woman's voice, hoarse, rough, and distorted, as though she was speaking to him form under water. Her hand was on his face. Her fingers were freezing. He tried to shift but it was as though his arms and legs were held down by leaden weights. It was like nearly drowning in the Black Lake at the end of the second task, only backwards.

Instead of spots of black, spots of light began to creep into his vision. He could feel he brow knit with confusion even as he eyelids fluttered shut and his eyes rolled involuntarily in his head. He was strangely aware of everything even though he couldn't react to it properly and the thought sent adrenaline racing through his bloodstream.

Something was very wrong.

He groaned a bit, maybe. The freezing hand came down hard on his mouth.

"Shh. Shh. Quietly," hissed the woman.

She was distressed. Shaking with the same fear that stole all the warmth from her capable hands. She'd found him in the street, he remembered.

His eyelids twitched open again and he focused on her face. She was crouched next to him her face close enough that he could feel every too-quick, hot, gasping breath. Her breath stunk, Harry noted detachedly.

His vision was wonky. Lopsided. His body was starting to feel less heavy but it was also starting to hurt. He opened his mouth to try and voice the questions that had started chasing themselves in frantic circles around his brain before remembering that he shouldn't or possibly that he wasn't allowed.

Where was he? What had happened? Bits and pieces were coming back to him along with the awareness of his body. Flashes. Mocking laughter and pain and then a calm, hoarse and clinical, but undeniably female voice, and yet more pain.

The woman was crying. Quietly, covering up her own sobs just as mercilessly as she'd stifled his groan. They were lying next to a bed. The door was in their line of sight. A dresser was pushed up against it.

The woman's name was Rachel, he remembered suddenly. Rachel Tottingham-Peck. She was a nurse in a small clinic but had done some time on a trauma team in London General before deciding she didn't have the stomach even if she had the skill. A reassurance seeing as how he remembered she'd told him all that in a perfectly steady, confident voice while hovering over him with a hastily sterilized kitchen knife.

All the hospitals were overflowing, she'd said. He'd lose the eye either way and if she didn't do what she could for him now then there was a chance an infection would set in, damage his brain or his remaining eye. He'd given her the go ahead.

He let his head loll slightly to the side to get a better look at her. There was an aluminum baseball bat laying across her folded legs.

The world spun like a tilt-a-whirl, or what Harry, who'd never been to an amusement park in his life, imagined a tilt-a-whirl to be like. It certainly sounded right. The floor tilted, his head whirled. He closed his eyes, eye he supposed, when he felt the nausea creeping up on him.

"You okay?" Rachel asked, in a trembling voice.

"Feel sick," Harry croaked, trying to modulate his voice.

"I'm sorry. It's the drugs I gave you to knock you out."

"S'fine. D'rather be knocked out anyway."

"I'm sorry," she repeated anyway.

With his eyes closed it was easier to focus on the sound of her breathing, hitched and panicky, and the crashing and cursing coming from the next house over.

"What—"

"Looters," murmured Rachel making an anxious shushing noise, "They've been in and out of houses on this street for the past hour and a half. I saw what they did to the Conellys, to their little girls—"

She broke off with a choked noise.

"You could just go," Harry offered, feeling strangely detached and magnanimous about the whole idea, "There's a window in here somewhere, right? Can't see shit."

"That's 'cause your eyes are closed, hun."

She laughed then and had to bite down on her finger to keep the hysteria down to a manageable volume.

"I thought about it," she confessed, sniffing, her voice evening out a bit with resignation or something like it, "You were unconscious and drugged out of your mind, what would you care. Guess I'm too much of a bleeding heart though, huh?"

"Guess so," Harry echoed, a bit bewildered, "Thanks for that."

The crashing, whooping and cursing got louder and closer and Rachel and Harry got tenser and tenser. Her hand found his and nearly crushed it in a vice-like grip when the front door caved in with a few good sounding bangs.

Wood splintered and cracked. Rachel's free hand tightened around the handle of her baseball bat. Harry felt a jolt of what had to be the tattered shreds of his instinct for self-preservation.

"Search the place," barked a male voice.

Harry tried to count, the voices, the boot treads, but his head was too fuzzy. Another jolt, this one accompanied by a strange sensation. The only this standing between him and probably humiliation, mutilation, and death was a small, brave, muggle woman with long dark hair, a voice like distressed velvet, and no stomach for violence.

The rattle at the doorknob was inevitable and sudden, making Rachel jump and Harry give a violent full body twitch that hurt but didn't move him very far.

"Bedroom's locked, boss-man, looks like there are still little mice inside."

"Rats," the first man corrected, "They've trapped themselves like rats so rats they'll be."

"You're such a fucking pansy ass," scoffed another voice, another woman's voice, "Let me tell you there's not a single fucking thing worth fucking stealing in this whole fucking house. There's not even a fucking tv! Who the fuck doesn't have at least two tvs?"

"We couldn't take a tv even if the bitch had one, and what the bitch does have is drugs," moaned an appreciative male voice.

"Stupid fucking asshole, if it doesn't shimmer, glimmer, shine or glitter I ain't interested. Fucktard."

"You're a fucktard," pouted the guy.

"I want me a taste 'o them rat's is hiding away in the bedroom," slurred yet another voice, "I want to make 'em scream for me."

Harry wondered if he was drunk. Maybe high. Maybe both.

Beside him Rachel let out a small horrified noise that told him that he should be worried even through the drug haze. That told him the voice was painting a more vivid picture for her.

"You'll have your damned rats, and Vice you will get your damned shiny things but now is not the time to be getting sloppy. Everything is fucked up now, yes, but once people start getting their shit together again, they are going to realize what happened on this, pretty, little street and I'm not about to go down for that. So just chill the fuck out for a minute and put your damn gloves back on."

"Fucking killjoy."

"You're always as angry as nail filled piss Vice. I don't think you'd know what joy was if it smacked your pretty little ass a couple dozen times."

"Fuck off, Newman."

"Where are you going Vice?" sighed the leader.

"Kitchen. I'm starving and I don't have any fucking interest in fucking with what-his-face's fucking rats."

"Your loss," said Newman.

The lock on the bedroom door, not actually meant for keeping the determined out, snicked open and Rachel was on her feet bodily pushing the heavy dresser more firmly against the door rattling in its frame.

Harry tried to lever himself up off the floor and go help, hell, he was only so much dead weight anyway so he might as well be dead weight on top of the only thing between him and Rachel and the crazy-ass bad guys on the other side of the door. He managed to get his arms underneath him, but they were about the same consistency as over-cooked spaghetti and his back made it about two inches from the floor before they gave out and his various bruises and lacerations and abused musculature all screamed a violent protest at the attempt.

"Gimme a hand with this!"

"Here, use this."

All at once there was a crash and a whoop of excitement as the door splintered and was torn away from its hinges. Rachel screamed and jumped out of the way as the looters tipped the dresser over with one violent shove. Three rough looking men scrambled over the fallen dresser into the room their eyes a lit with unholy glee as they caught sight of Rachel.

She swung her bat and caught the smallest of the three on the shoulder.

"Ow, fuck! Bitch!" whined Newman.

"Vice is right, you are a pansy-ass," sneered the leader.

He shoved Newman aside and when Rachel swung her bat at him with a cry of rage and fear he caught the bat with a grimace and managed to yank it out of Rachel's hands while she was too stunned to recover.

"Run! Rachel!" shouted Harry since it was the only thing he could do.

"Shut up!"

Newman planted a boot in his side and Harry felt the stiches in his stomach strain even with the numbing effects of the drugs.

"Stop it let me go!" screamed Rachel, as the third man dragged her from the room by her hair.

There was a loud crash from the next room and Rachel started screaming, shrill with pain and panic, more like a cornered animal than a woman.

"Ow! Fucking bitch! You'll regret that!" spat the third man.

"I'm going to help Toby hold the bitch down. You think you can handle the kid?"

"Don't worry boss, I'll handle him real good."

"Fucking faggot," the leader rolled his eyes and strode back out of the room.

There was another loud crash, and a sharp pained keen from the next room.

"Rachel! Rachel!"

"I said shut up, boy! You hard of hearing or something?" snarled Newman.

He had a gun shoved into the front of his pants in a way that made Moody's warning about losing a buttock flit briefly across his mind, but he didn't pull it out. Instead he crouched down and hooked the edge of a small sharp knife into Harry's nostril.

"It'd be a shame to mutilate that pretty face," he crooned, his bloodshot eyes bright, "Even all beat to hell you look sweet enough to eat twice."

In the next room Rachel had stopped screaming and Harry could hear the meaty sound of flesh on flesh coupled with grunts and breathy curses.

Newman hauled him up of the floor without too much trouble and tossed him down on the bed. His abused body screamed at the rough treatment but Harry ignored it in favor of the blind panic that was welling up under his breastbone.

He tried to kick at Newman as he yanked his borrowed scrub bottoms off and tossed them aside. The man just laughed, grabbing his ankle and using it to yank Harry closer.

"You're weaker than a newborn kitten, boy, there's no use in fighting me and you can't even stand to run. Might as well just lie back and think of England."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. Both at the soft clink of a belt buckle being undone and the sudden tears welling up behind his eyes. He'd never been raped before. Maybe that went without saying for a lot of people, but Harry had been abused by the Dursleys, his classmates, and his teachers for most of his life before Hogwarts. He'd been whipped, hit, starved, screamed at, shunned, forced into slave labor, locked in small spaces, burned, stabbed, cursed, cut on, he'd had his bones broken and his clothes ripped and even been groped a few times but this was a line he'd never crossed.

He was scared out of his mind.

Logically he knew it couldn't hurt any more than having his eye taken out, maybe the smart thing would be to stop struggling, to let Newman take him and hope he'd get the chance to retaliate before he was killed. Instead he struggled harder,"No, please, don't," falling from his lips in a strange desperate litany that put a crooked sadistic smile on Newman's face.

"That's it, boy, beg for me to stop. Scream all you like. No one can save you now."

Newman lifted his hips and Harry got himself together enough to start clawing at the man's face and arms, squirming and struggling the best he could. The press of his cock head tore a broken whimper from Harry's throat and all of a sudden there was an explosion of broken glass and a wet gooey spatter across his legs.

Harry opened his eyes hardly daring to believe that Newman was finished with him only to find that the gooey spatter wasn't cum, as he'd assumed, but the remnants of Newman's exploded head. His body swayed for a minute, balanced against the bed and then crumpled to the floor with a wet thud.

Harry's eye went very wide and then he quickly rolled over and threw up.

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**AN: **And that's the chapter. So I've decided to just drop you guys smack dab in the middle of the action and let the explanations unfold as chapters progress, so don't worry if it doesn't make sense at the moment. Please take some time to leave a review and let me know what you thought!


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